


Life, Love, and Liberty

by Impressioniste



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 10:49:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1685612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impressioniste/pseuds/Impressioniste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knew she'd never be free with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life, Love, and Liberty

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of a previously written work, with some minor edits.

He'd spent six years in Kirkwall, unsure of everything.

Well, **almost** everything.

He loved Hawke, he was certain of that. It was the only certainty in his life that he could remember, perhaps the only certainty that had ever been. And it had been so very difficult, those first three years, to spend every day falling more and more in love with someone he was too afraid to touch.

He was lonely, and desperate, and weak, even though his true strength shone brightly through his mistakes, through his pain and fear. And he loved her.

She was strong and sure of herself, and never backed down. She was good, and fair, and everything Anders thought he had given up on in this world. And she loved him.

They danced and circled slowly around their feelings for three long years, pulled like puppets on the threads of fate, the strings that bound them refusing to bend or break, only winding themselves more tightly in knots around their hearts until they found themselves tied completely together, with nowhere left to run.

But running was all he had ever known, all **they** had ever known; He found himself resigned to a caged existence while surrounded by the illusion of something more just out of reach.

She did not give up on him. Embracing through the bars, they dreamed of freedom, a dream that sustained them for three more years.

She was strong; He could see it in everything she did, everything she said, everything she'd accomplished. She was no fragile flower, to be admired in a vase, beautiful from a distance but never to be touched. She was power, and life; The taste of her sent lightning through his veins; The feel of her kindled fire in his heart he'd scarcely believed possible.

He loved her. She loved him. And they embraced through a set of more brightly gilded bars, and spoke of freedom.

But he knew she'd never be free with him.

In a shower of sparks and smoke and magic that heralded beginning of the end, he set her free.

She was free to choose. She was free to go.

And still, she chose him.

They had lost and loved and lost again, and even though it hurt, she forgave. She believed.

When she kissed him, he couldn't tell if her tears were from love or pain or the ash that stung their eyes as it rained down around them; When she kissed him, he realized his mistake, and just how wrong he'd been--about her, about the future, about everything.

Well, **almost** everything.

In the wake of flame and smoke and restless chains, with blood on the stone at their feet and the wind at their backs, the bars between them vanished. They joined their hands just as tightly as they'd joined their hearts, and amidst the chaos, without looking back, found freedom.


End file.
